Criticism and Suggestions for Illutia
Criticism and Suggestions for Illutia By Envoy I can't recall when Illutia begun, perhaps around 2005, however it is a game that has existed for nearly (if not) 10 years now. When illutia began there was perhaps 50-80 players online, all players from Crazed Monkey's previous game aspereta, over the years illutia has been on a steep decline as of now (6/2015) the player count on average is probably around 5, and at peak on a lucky day 10 may play. What happened? I will examine what I believe contributed to the games downfall, and later make suggestions for how to improve these problems and restart the growth of players. When illutia first began, when there was around 50-80 players, the game was very different, illutia at the time was full of people on a equal playing field, spells were dramatically different, class distinctions in terms of the ability to solo effectively were dramatically different. In the beginning many players simply didn't understand how the game was setup, as few had hit level 50, I believe it was almost a year before a swordsman hit level 50. Therefore with that being said, the pre-50 grind was far more difficult and most players were therefore under level 50, therefore they could all group together and were very much on the same level of gameplay. At this time the donation shop was only used for pre-50 items and only a few level 50 items were actually better than gear that was obtainable at 50. At some point various changes were made to each class, bard's lost their stat based attacks, knaves lost the ability to cast spells and remain invisible, the aether on swordsmens attack was lengthened and their ultimate exertion spell was altered from being a non stop castable short aether buff to one which had a long aether. and Mystics spells aethers were shortened (AB only). But also during this time people found out they could reset and keep their experience sold and stats, in the beginning this was viewed as a jailable offence as it was seen as players taking advantage of a glitch or bug, but eventually illutia staff decided it should be kept, and later service tickets (a donationable item) were purposed with allowing players to "reset" their sold. This change, in addition to the large changes in the classes, led most players to playing the mystic class and resetting to swordsmen to "reset their sold" to permanently modify their stats in a way that was not originally intended. While the game became mystic dominant amongst the players individuals playing priest and bard had an especially difficult time gaining experience and therefore were also tempted to join in the training style of the general player base. The dominance of mystics became even larger as time went on, this was because overtime the donation shop helped mystics more so than any other class with high spell damage items, spell critical increasing items, and some high mana regen items. This made mystics extremely powerful and made it so that they did not have to even group or wear weak gear that they would have had to have worn to be able to cast spells without fizzling. As new content came out within Vita genero (as players were stuck with grief, malice and wrath for a long time), mystics became even more powerful by contrast, this was because of the design of the high sold maps. In almost all the more difficult maps monsters had higher health, had a 2 tile range of attack, and were found more abundantly within the map. This meant that herding spells were very efficient, this led to many knaves complaining about not being able to "solo a boss" or even get to a boss when a mystic could. This meant that not only did mystics get more experience, but they could also get better gear. This became a larger problem when items gained titles and surnames. For a long time almost every class except mystic, and bard, were considered near useless this was until maps such as glutt, envy, and AP/AC made swordsmen relevant again. However swordsmen had been changed over time to be solely support, and therefore they had to rely on mystics for experience, this would become especially problematic when mystics on average were higher sold and able to go to higher sold maps and gain similar if not better exp by simply soloing. With the introduction of AP/AC/FH knaves were once again in a difficult spot this was due in large part do the nature of their spells, if knaves opted to attempt to surpass the damage of a mystic they risked death far more than mystics as using critical strike would remove a large portion of their health and leave them open for death by either breaking taunt, or the enemies AoE spells. Mystics did not have this problem either, as they could simply stand out of range, and if they broke taunt they could possibly survive long enough to either kill the monster or have a tank pull back agro. With the introduction of lust and spirit realm maps illutia had a chance to either rebalance classes or at least offer them something dramatically different. Instead the items and maps presented even poorer upgrades from vita genero maps. Drops from lust bosses were clearly better than greed or grief for mystic, however this wasn't true for knave or many other classes. Drops from maps off of spirit realm dramatically improved mystics, this was done through at least 4 items that gave massive mana regen, the devastator helmet, the devastator shield, the devastator chestplate, and the light version of their weapon from cannibalistic channel. In addition these items (and others) greatly improved their spell damage and spell crit, knaves on the other hand were not given as much spell damage, given almost no additional strength (the main source of their damage) or spell crit. In other words mystics were disproportionately buffed. As you can see the changes in the game in various ways, such as in the map design, monster design, items, donations, and spells, have led to less diversity of classes in the game that are actually played. This is perhaps one of the greatest reasons I can see why people quit, because the entire game playing one class leads to a game with no grouping, one style dominating, and ultimately boredom. The second reason why players left was because content simply was lacking and wasn't challenging. Experience gained from monsters never changes with sold, and therefore players could repetitively train and gain unlimited amounts of experience. This lead to players quickly outplaying any of the maps (even years in advance). To some extent this is attributable to staff not having planned maps that take into account how players play the game, in essence the rate of game development could be appropriate if the game was built around a more casual player design, but it is not. To date the only events that are casual based (where playing constantly 24/7 does not greatly enhance a players prospects) is the spawn times of mother dragon and air realm bosses, they are so spread apart that players have no benefit camping them. The rise and fall of specialty maps For a long time AP/AC/FH were argued amongst players, higher sold players called the sold cap unfair and many lower solds thought it was too difficult. Specialty maps such as AP/AC/FH and Death at a time offered players a genuine challenge, a reason to group (and even get stronger), and a chance to get some exciting gear. Unfortunately the appeal of these maps was diminished after new maps with superior gear was available, this could have possibly been avoided by offering gear that was not linearly superior. Castle Reflex is a new specialty map and it also actually fails for the same reason as AP/AC/FH, that is newer items that are better are available, and infact, players are generally not going to go after something that offers too little of a reward for the effort. This is especially the case when the map requires a group and the player base is struggling in numbers. A donation shop on a whim The donation shop in illutia initially brought about a slight advantage for players, over time it began to offer massive advantages to level 50 players, especially those that were mystics. Donations are done by players for many reasons, some truly donate to keep the game alive, but arguably most do it for some kind of gain, whether it is in their game wardrobe through custom tickets, or through advantageous items. Over time, either randomly, or seasonally, the game began to offer sales and special ways to use illutia credits. This became a disaster as players behavior began to negatively impact the fluctuation of items and gold within the game. For example, whenever credits were on sale, the value of donation items were plummet and it often took a very long time for this to recover from because people would binge buy credits. Also over time these "sales" prices for credits, eventually became the normal price, again negatively impacting the value of these in game. Donations also began to give large advantages, for example the heroes passport gave players access to the burial hall which for any player under 1 billion experience sold can easily give more experience than grief, malice, or possibly even wrath. Item balancing and the worth of a quest. As stated previously the game has experienced massive balancing issues, infact if anything power creep (an instance in games where the average power of things in a game over time increases so that old items are worthless) has occurred. In the beginning when there was a few donates players could still rely on quest items or drops to give them good items, now there is many items from older maps, with higher level requirements, that are much weaker than new items with lower level requirements. Also another problem is that items are sometimes very poorly designed to fit their purpose, pre-50 items have this problem more than other items. For example a fist level 45 bear claw has 31 damage and .9 delay while a swordsman lvl 45 sword has 39. How does this reinforce that fists deal more damage than swordsmen? The 7mil weapon quest which consisted of buying the 5 mil weapon, killing 1 thousand of each vita genero type monster, and then paying 2 million gp to upgrade it gave players something to do, a reason to temporarily group, and a worthwhile reward at the end. Unfortunately not even within a year the spirit realm maps would be released and players could get superior weapons by either beating the cannibalistic channel boss or purchasing a 2 million gp weapon. The equity of this caused a great annoyance amongst players as the effort involved didn't justify the reward anymore. The main problem was that players had no idea this was coming, and there is no "progression" of effort to reward. Infact many times players are better off simply grinding to get to an easier map with better gear than they are attempting to kill a boss, complete a quest, or what have you. This is a massive problem with the game and still could exist in the future. Double exp: The curse of gluttony When double experience was introduced into the game many players were estatic, but over time it ruined the game. Double experience ruined the game because people began to rely upon it, that meant that people would donate, or get others to buy credits, and plan their training around that, and hunt bosses or sit in patrian when it was not double. In effect a lot of their time that would of spent training actually was reduced while their experience increased. This was problematic because for some it probably led to burn out, and for others, especially when there was little double experience for long periods of time, it meant chronic boredom. Conclusion As I have stated previously there are many changes that together lead to specific endings that can be seen as negatively effecting the game. For the game to succeed classes need to be rebalanced so that players of similar sold can either do similar tasks with similar difficulty, or do different tasks with one class clearly favoring the task over the other. Players should not feel pushed into one class or gamestyle. And more diversity of roles for each class may be good. There are other problems, but I might discuss them in a later article. Thanks for reading, Envoy, resident autist